Sermon XIII. The Negro Mission

From that day to this, men of our blood and speech, in the habit of St. Francis, St. Dominic, and St. Ignatius, and more recently in the Congregations of France, have gone forth into all the world. Men of English blood and English speech, men of Irish blood and of Irish faith, have left our shores to labour among the heathen. But England has never until now founded a Seminary for Missions to the Heathen. While England was Catholic, England had no colonies. It was shut up within its four seas. The New World was not known to exist; and the East was preoccupied, or beyond our reach. When England acquired its great colonial empire, it had lost the Faith. By a strange cross and contradiction of Divine Providence, while England was Catholic, it had no missionary College; and when it lost the Faith, it acquired sway over one-fifth of the population of the world. But the Church in England lived on like the live coal in the embers hidden among the ashes: and He who ' does not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax,'1 in His own good time kindled again into flame the faith and charity of England. Only twenty years ago its perfection was restored to the Church in England in the unity and authority of

1 Isaias xlii. 3.

its Episcopate; and within fifteen years of that time the Catholic Church founded its College for Foreign Missions. I think, then, we have a singular cause of great joy to-day: for, so far as I know, nothing like it is written in the annals of the Catholic Church in this land. We meet to-day to send out the first missionaries from the first seminary founded by the Church in England to evangelise the heathen world. In these last years, we have met in this spot six times; first, at a house hard by, where this seminary was founded. That day, two or three met together in faith of the presence of our Divine Master. Again we met in the same place, when the rude chapel, a fitting sanctuary for missionaries — built with rough wood — was opened. We met a third time to lay the foundation of this house. For the fourth time we met, when this house was fit to receive its students, to instal them in their home. Once more we met to lay the first stone of the church by the side of this college. And lastly, we meet to-day to send forth from this seminary its first band of missionary fathers. God has blessed in a notable manner the small beginning of this work. He has so planted it in the ground, that no hand of man can root it out. That it will grow in strength and stature; that it will spread itself abroad far and wide, who can doubt?

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The mission to which these devoted men will go is a mission of an exceptional kind. This Seminary was founded, as you know, not for the ordinary work of priests in the colonies of the British Empire — not for labour within the boundaries of any Christian civilisation — but for missions to the heathen strictly so called. We send forth to-day these good fathers for the work of converting the negro population in the South of the American Union. At first sight you will perhaps say: This is not, indeed, within the colonies of the British Empire, but it is within the frontiers of Christian civilisation. I answer: The population to whom they go is altogether exceptional. In the heart of a Christian people there are five millions of the negro race, who the other day were slaves. They may be truly said to be without pastors and without spiritual care. They are altogether an exceptional, I might say an isolated, race in the midst of a Christian people. Therefore, the Mission of to-day fulfils to the very letter the terms for which this Seminary was founded. It is in very truth a Mission to the heathen, to the most outcast heathen; a Mission to a population brought, it is true, within the light of civilisation, yet excluded from its inheritance. It dwells apart, in the cold air of neglect and contempt. To such a people, sitting alone in darkness, these good missionaries are sent. They go, not to labour for the white population of America; not to assist the pastors of America in labouring for the blacks within their parishes or districts. They go, bound by the vow which they will make in your hearing, to labour for the black population alone. I may describe their mission by the words of the prophet: ' The Spirit of the Lord is upon them.' If ' no one can say the Lord Jesus, except by the Holy Ghost,' then assuredly no one could conceive the purpose and the will to choose this mission to the negro race, but by the Holy Ghost. If the Spirit of the Lord had not been upon them, they would not be here to-day. That they are. sent by the Lord we know; for the Vicar of Jesus Christ, with a special benediction, has sent them. They go ' to preach to the meek,' to a population the most abased, outcast, down-trodden, of all the people of the earth. The Indians of the East and West, the races of Asia and America, are noble and dignified, compared with the poor negro. The races of Africa have been despised and trampled under foot by all nations even to this day. It is this poor, off-cast, persecuted race that these good missionaries have chosen for their special care. Truly they have been sent ' to preach to the meek, to heal the contrite of heart, and to preach a release to the captives.' It was but the other day that they had the chains of captivity upon them. The galling scars of bondage are on the limbs of that race; and even after their liberation that brand will be transmitted to their children's children. Finally, these good fathers go ' to preach deliverance to them that are shut up' — shut up by the social exclusiveness of human pride, by a barrier which is more impenetrable than walls of stone: to abolish their spiritual bondage, and to admit them into the liberty of the children of God. Surely this is an event which appeals to all our hearts.

First, because England is guilty towards the poor negro race of Africa. England, before God, is stained with the blood of the negro. England has drawn more tears, and sighs, and groans, from the heart of the negro than any other people. Lest I should seem to exaggerate, and lest any should say that there are others, like Spain and Portugal, who trafficked in human flesh; I answer, that for a century and a half we inflicted the slave-trade upon Africa, and that it was the English slavery of the West Indies that created this traffic in Northern America.

I know nothing more blood - stained nor more horrible in the history of man than the recitals of this murderous trade: the hovering of the slave-ship on the coasts of Africa, the sweeping away of old and young, man, woman, child; the chaining them between decks so low that they could not stand and could hardly sit, in crowds so thick that they could hardly lie; without food or water to slake thirst under the burning heat of the equator, and in the suffocating pestilential air of a slave-ship, where sleep was-impossible, and death the only kindly voice; festering, dying, and breeding pestilence in the stifling hold of the slaver. And when that inhuman traffic was-pursued by justice on the high seas, these miserable victims of man's cruelty and avarice were cast into the deep to escape detection, like contraband goods, along the track of flight. Horrible as is all this in its physical torments, there was perhaps something more degrading, more revolting still — the slave-market. Men who have seen it have described it. Men and women exposed like beasts, to be handled, tried, tested, and examined, as cattle for shambles: and not only this, but parents and children sold and rent asunder, husband and wife separated from each other, every bond that binds the human heart in fidelity and love — and such hearts were more human, more loving, and more pure than the heart of the trader in flesh and blood — coarsely and cruelly violated. Out of the Cities of the Plain, on which the fire of God came down, there never was a sin more burning or more loudly crying to God for vengeance than slavery and the slave - trade. And yet we were guilty of it. We were among the chief authors of it; and though not perhaps the first to begin it, yet for the magnitude of our share it stands at the head of our misdeeds. It was England that bequeathed the sin of slavery to its American plantations. We gave this plague-spot to the American Union. And there is in the Southern States at this moment a negro population, who only the other day were emancipated, equal to the population of Ireland. But as yet they are not civilised. They are not yet Christian.

Such is the debt that England has to pay in charity to the negroes of Africa. It is true indeed that we have abolished the slave-trade; it is true that we have ceased to hold slaves: but that negro population exists in our colonies and in North America through our sin. If there ever was a country which answers to the prophetic doom, it is England; for it is full of gold and silver, and thyine wood, and precious stones, and wheat, and oil, and wine, and cattle^ and sheep, and slaves, and souls of men.

We are bound by every motive of charity to make a reparation for the cruel wrongs inflicted by our forefathers on this suffering race. It is indeed true that England made some atonement by abolishing the slave-trade, and by paying the blood-money when it abolished slavery. America has paid a costlier blood-money and in a coin more precious than England. We gave some twenty millions of gold and silver: America has paid the lives of half a million of men. The chief cause of their fraternal war was slavery. But we owe still a reparation of Christian charity, not only to the negroes as they now exist in America, but also to the country from which they were carried away. England, it is true, has been keeping watch by its ships on the shores of Africa to prevent the slave-trade of other countries. But this is not enough. England owes a reparation of another kind. The slave-trade has made the name of England, and the name of Christian, hateful to Africa. We owe to Africa a reparation of Christian charity and Christian zeal. We must ask its Christian forgiveness. It is our duty to obtain from Africa our absolution from the wrongs which we have committed; and I trust that the work to which these reverend fathers go will not only be to labour among the negroes of the South, but to found in America a Missionary College like to this, in which natives of Africa may be trained to carry the faith into their own land.

We are now going to send into the United States a vanguard. We are taking up an advanced and advantageous position for the purpose of acting not so much upon America as upon Africa. These may seem bold thoughts, and the hopes of an enthusiast; and yet when Winfrid went forth from his cloister in Nutsell, how little did he dream of the empire of faith which should spring up from his word?

Two centuries ago, the 'Ark' and the 'Dove' lay in the Thames, with some two hundred English Catholics on board, bound for our American plantations. They were driven from England by the cruelty of the times to find peace and liberty of conscience in a land where Christianity was unknown. How little did they think, when the 'Ark' and ' Dove' were tossing in the Atlantic, that they were the seed of a mighty empire and of a wide -spread Church. And who knows what the little beginning of to-day may be? who can tell that there may not spring up an Apostolate for Africa, a Hierarchy of Bishops and Priests, to turn back the light of salvation, which from the east came westward, upon the darkened west again? Surely there is a day of grace for Africa; a land on which a doom of Heaven seems to weigh. It is shut out from all the world. Its impassable deserts, its pestilential shores, its untraceable rivers, its regions without a track for human foot, its teeming races and unknown multitudes — all these make Africa to be a land of mystery and awe. Surely the day will come when upon those who sit in darkness a light of salvation will arise.

We have therefore to thank God who has put it into the hearts of these missionary fathers to labour for the negro and for Africa. We have to thank them also in the name of England and in our own. They are going to accomplish a part of that work of reparation and expiation for which we are all responsible. We pray for them to-day, that God may accept their mission to the negroes of America, and to the people of Africa hereafter. We pray that God will accept them, and bless them for their charity and for this perfect oblation of themselves. We pray that God will accept it also in our behalf.

And next, we have to take courage from their example. I have always felt, and I declare again to-day, that this seminary is a boon bestowed on the priesthood of this diocese and of England. It is an example for us all. It calls us to detachment from home and friends and kindred and country — from self and all that is soft, and sweet, and subtil, and attractive to the human heart. It warns us also to be detached from all things; and that without this a priest is little worth. They also warn us of the love we ought to bear to souls — not of souls enjoying the light, and grace, and refinements of Christianity, but of souls brought down to the lowest depths of human degradation, to the outcasts among men, to whom men and even priests do not go by natural preference. They have chosen the better part. They have chosen to labour, not for a population full of human attraction, but repulsive to human fastidiousness; repulsive, I mean, to the natural man, but attractive indeed to those who have the heart of the Good Shepherd, beautiful to eyes illuminated by faith, because they are souls for whose sake our Divine Master took upon Him our humanity, and from whom other men coldly turn away. I say, then, they set us an example of the love of souls: and God knows we have amongst us heathen souls debased and brutal-ised with all the vices of a corrupt civilisation and of an apostate Christianity. I hope all of us, young and old, will go back from this house to-day better priests, more heedless of the world and of self, more kindled with love to the perishing, more wholly given to the service of our Divine Master. We have, indeed, abundant need of missions in England, where one half of the population are not Christian in life, whatever they be in name. There are tens of thousands in Glasgow, in Liverpool, and in London, living without Christ and without God in the world. For such souls no priest will be able to do his Master's work who has not in him the heart of a missionary — a heart detached from the world, and inflamed with a thirst for their salvation. This is our second motive for thanking them while we bid them farewell, to-day.

And now, dear brethren and fathers, my last words are to you. You are about to take your missionary vow, and that vow is this: that you give yourselves for ever to be the fathers and servants of the negroes. You give yourselves for ever, not to labour for the white people, but for those who are t black, yet beautiful' in the sight of Him who loves them and died for them. You go to labour for them, and for them only, in the spirit of Peter Claver, who under his vow wrote these words: ' Peter, for ever the slave of the negro.' Vos estis servi servorum Dei. It is a great title that you take to-day. To you, as to His Apostles, our divine Lord says: Neminem per mam salutaveritis; salute no man by the way: do not linger on your errand. You are sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; for they are of the Israel of God, because God has purchased them to be His people. Et in quamcumque civitatem intraveritis, et suscipient vos, manducate qua apponuntur vobis; into whatever city you enter, and they receive you, eat what is set before you, and there abide until you go thence, et ibi manete donee exeatis; and go not from house to house, nolite transire de domo in domum. You are not going, dear brethren, to enter into the houses of the white man, but to dwell in the huts of the black. They are to be your hosts, and your spiritual children, unto death. Nemo mittens manum suam ad aratrum, et respiciens retro, aptus est regno Dei. No one having once put his hand to the plough, if he look back, is fit for the kingdom of God. Go, then, to this work; consecrate yourselves to it, body, soul, and spirit; and, as Jesus offered Himself for you, so offer yourselves for Him. His oblation was perfect. Oblatus est, quia ipse voluit. His will was offered up once for all. So offer yours for ever. You go to give yourselves — to save those poor souls from whom men turn away, but for whom Jesus shed His Blood. You will firmly hold to this high mission, and will turn aside from the solicitations which, perhaps, may be addressed to you in the name of charity, to labour for others who need you less. Go, then; for the Spirit of the Lord is upon you: ' the Lord has sent you to preach to the meek, to heal the contrite of heart, to preach release to the captive, and eternal deliverance to those that are shut up.' And may God, in His infinite mercy, pour upon you His sevenfold spirit of charity and zeal. May He multiply your labours a hundredfold. May He give you gladness in your life, and peace in the hour of death, and a crown of glory radiant with souls bright as the stars to all eternity.